InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Save the sheepies!"

dr_hermes (dr_hermes) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-07-27 22:40:00

Entry tags:

char: dick tracy, creator: chester gould, era: golden age

Working for the Brow
As a kid, DICK TRACY seemed more nightmarish to me than most outright horror comics. The art was so strange, flat and claustrophic. The villains WERE villains, not anti-heroes with a noble streak but just heartless human monsters who were usually physically deformed in some way. And the strip was violent. Tracy had no code against killing, he was not a masked avenger or secret operative or millionaire playboy investigating crimes. He was a cop. Period. When the shooting started, he usually sent a bullet tunneling through the crook's head (which left a neat little hole.. Chester Gould's art was weird). At the same time, even the likeable secondary characters wandering in and out were eccentric. It was an odd strip, but immensely popular in its day and influential. The grotesque bad guys with a visual gimmick were used by the pulps and later by Batman and other comics heroes.

In 1944, Dick Tracy took on the Brow. This charmer was a Nazi spy working the USA despite his conspicuous appearance. Both ears had been cut off in a knife fight and he had a high, deeply furrowed forehead. The Brow got hold of the Summer Sisters, May and June... these were a pair of unreliable would-be actresses who were not above picking pockets or pulling a con, making their way in the big city by their wits but they got in over their heads this time.

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fungo_squiggly
2009-07-28 03:00 am UTC (link)

Geez, those Summer Sisters look almost as scary as the Brow does.

And yeah, that's some pretty terrifying villainy. You'd think the Brow would at least have the tiny amount of decency it would take to give them enough time to complete their errand that there's actually a possibility of coming back without finding that your sister has been perforated.

Also, speaking as a guy who actually did have his wrist broken once, I found the girls' quick recovery from that kind of annoying. Took me six weeks before my wrist healed, and for the first week after it broke, I couldn't even pick up a plastic comb with that hand.:/

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dr_hermes
2009-07-28 03:11 am UTC (link)

Yeah, Gould's concept of "pretty" is unorthodox.

Dick Tracy villains are just heartless, as a rule. You don't get the gunman who lets someone get away because she reminds me of a long-lost girlfriend or the blackmailer who redeems himself at the cost of his own life. They're just bad straight though and they deserve the gruesome deaths they inevitably get.

I'm surprised that Chester Gould treated the broken wrists so lightly myself. Both the good guys and the bad took a lot of damage in the strip and they usually didn't just shrug it off. (Tracy got enough flesh wounds to have whittled him away if they all happened at once.)

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